A Night in Pinnacles National Park

2013.08.17

Day One Hundred and Forty Six. After last week's highly successful shoot at Fremont Peak, I went over to Pinnacles National Park to shoot an entire evening of stars. When I got there, the moon was too strong to see the Milky Way, so I had no idea I'd be going home with it in frame, but I'm pretty happy with how well this turned out, especially given the amount of change that occurred in the lighting conditions over the course of the evening. The crazy part was definitely sleeping out under the stars in the middle of a national park. I didn't have a tent. All I had was a sleeping pad and all of the super creepy sounds of the wildlife that comes out in the middle of the night to keep me company. It took me a moment to realize what the loud high pitched sound was that kept waking me up until I remembered that bats lived in the caves not 200 steps from were I'd set up my camera. I'd never heard echolocation before and it was pretty cool to realize that's what it was, but kind of scary at the same time. Since it was completely pitch black after the moon set, I couldn't see them and therefore had absolutely no idea how low they were flying. I made myself as flat as humanly possible and hoped there weren't any hungry vampire bats flying around :)